The person who’s most in tune to my every nuance has moved
on~married to a wonderful man, establishing her own place in her own world~and I
couldn’t be happier for my Darling Girl.
Her new husband is more than I could ever have wished for her, exactly
the right match. I am confident that she
will learn to be a wonderful, loving wife to him. She chose superbly, and I am proud of the
woman that she is becoming. But still, I
miss her like I would miss oxygen, if it was taken from me. We are~she and I~very much the same in so
many ways, and…she gets me, like no one else ever has, or probably ever
will. We have a…certain inexplicable
balance between us… That is a great gift
to receive, and I miss it’s presence already.
When she left before, I knew that she’d be back, and that makes the missing
easier~that ability to think about the return.
But this time…this going is forever.
This going is gone. Recently, we’ve even joked: “Fine, but you only have three more weeks
to…run to the store with me, help me with laundry, feed the cat…”
whatever. I forgot how quickly time
flies, when you least want it to…
So here I am. All
these years of trying to be selfless in the name of mother-love, all this talk
of kids first, and what am I doing? I am
sitting here, wishing that it was 9 months ago, when there was no him. And don’t get me wrong: I love her him, I do. He is the best him for her, without a
doubt. But I am thinking of how much I
miss her, now that she's gone. How much I wish that her toothbrush was still there on the side of
the sink. How sad it makes me that I’ve finished the last load of
laundry that has her stuff in it. Realizing how selfish being the focus of her
love all of these years has made me. If
I had to give up my little corner of her heart to anyone, I’m grateful and even
happy to move aside for the one she’s chosen, truly. But I admit that I’m a little lost; I loved
her first, after all, before anybody else even knew she was
there. And no one will ever
love her like I do, no one will ever read her like I can. I know her heart at a glance…we finish each
other’s thoughts, for heaven’s sake! I
knew that she loved him before she even suspected it. And who is this man, anyway? Does he think, for even a moment, that he can
ever hold her in his heart with the fierceness that I have held her?
I am, as usual, unsure of how to play a lesser~or at
least, a vastly different~role in her life…
Our equation has been pretty much the same for, oh, the past 20
years. There has been her. And me.
Now, it is him and her, and I am flat-out TERRIFIED of screwing this up,
trying to figure out where I add in to the mix, and getting it wrong.
Lord save me from being THAT mother.
As I mull it over, it occurs to me that perhaps part of the problem is that I never, not ever,
not even once, had to “let go” of a single blessed thing when I was
younger. No, that business started
with~you guessed it~my daughter. It
began the moment that I gave birth. With
her first breath~in the very second that her small, perfect, wriggly little
self separated from my body…a lifetime of letting go began. We followed birth, of course, with a
multitude of transitions: Breast to
bottle, parental bed to crib, even mom’s arms to dad’s. I never worried about those things; it was
all a part of it, and besides, at the end of the day, to be honest: Mom was "The Bomb"~my place was secure~she
would always turn to me, and I would always be there, arms open, waiting. How arrogant I was about holding that sweet
spot in her heart for all of those years.
The question I have to ask is:
Have I appreciated enough the privilege of being so loved by her? Because I’m being moved in the equation,
again. I know that’s how it’s supposed
to be, that it’s even a good thing, but I’m having a hard time being exactly
happy about it…math, after all, is not my strength, and nobody likes being subtracted.
These are the thoughts I find myself grappling with, and
yet…I have seen it in his eyes when he doesn’t know that I’m watching: This girl~my girl~is his universe, now. I watched him last week, as he danced with my
daughter~his wife~and he held her waist with such gentle strength as he guided
her around the dance floor. I counted
the happy tears in his eyes as she walked toward him, her hand on her father’s
arm, ready to be given away, to take his name, his life, as her own. I have listened to him as he’s expressed his
delight at the wonder, the chance, of meeting her~of falling in love with
someone so extraordinary. I see the
pride in him when he’s with her: “This
woman is mine. She chose me. She is standing with me.” His pride mirrors my
own feelings for her: “That girl was
mine. She always chose me. She used to stand by me.” I have thought many times that I can’t fault
his taste in women.
There’s nothing that I have~not one thing~that isn’t that
child’s for the asking, and the last thing I would ever want is to have her
think that I want anything less than, well…everything,
for her; that’s my math. I was the first one to give this man the green light (and a little talking to about properly valuing my daughter). I’m also actually excited in some ways: I think it will be amazing, getting to be
wives together. I am already enthralled,
watching her as she navigates this “having a man” thing: For a relative newbie, she is skilled~patient,
unfailingly reasonable and calm, quick to smile. She’s got this, and as much as I will miss
her climbing the stairs to tell me about her day, or to just give me a hug and
a kiss, as much as I already have this girl-shaped vacancy in my personal
space, it is as it should be. She is right
where we have wanted her to land: Whole,
happy, loved.
And though our relationship is undergoing yet another “definitive
adjustment,” perhaps that will make what remains to us even sweeter. I never dreamed that having a daughter would
be like this for me. I never wanted to
be one of those moms who said “My kid is my best friend.” I always thought that that idea held a certain [potential] danger: A kid can have a lot of
friends; what they need in a mother is…a mother. Boy, did I underestimate the draw: My daughter is absolutely one of my best
friends, and I am so proud to say that I’m never not her mom when she needs me
for that, and she has never had to compromise being my kid in order for our
friendship to flourish.
Maybe I’ve been looking at this whole thing the wrong way: A) I
have a simply fantastic new son to add to my brood. B) Yes, I miss her~and him~terribly, but
actually, how great is that??? I mean,
if our relationship weren’t thriving in the first place, there’d be nothing
worth missing, right? And C) I’m not the only one who loves “us”~she loves
us, too, and neither of us is willing to suffer a loss on that point. Oh, and he loves “us” as well, so that’s
good, right? That's a LOT of addition.
Sooo, I need to remember that change doesn’t have to equal
loss; sometimes it’s actually the dividend of all you’ve been working for, and
saving. And I think that that is the
kind of math I can learn to master.
